This invention relates to means for rotating the plane of polarization of linearly-polarized optical beams without the aid of magnetic fields.
Polarization rotators, sometimes called Faraday rotators because of their use of magnetic fields in the prior art, are a useful control device in an optical apparatus; specifically, they can be an alternative to electrooptic modulators.
Nevertheless, the use of magnetic fields is cumbersome, slow and relatively expensive because of the nature of equipment required for supplying the magnetic control fields.
Therefore, it would be useful to have a new way to obtain a pure rotation of linear polarization of a light beam by any selected angle without the use of a magnetic field.